


a hunter's night

by blackkat



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Folklore, Folklore, Friendship, Gen, Hunters & Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26937877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: “I thought it was supposed to bewarmon this planet,” Ahsoka says, pulling her jacket a little tighter around her shoulders.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano & Shaak Ti
Comments: 18
Kudos: 444





	a hunter's night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragonpyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonpyre/gifts).



> For the 30 minute gift exchange on my server! My giftee was Pyre!

“I thought it was supposed to be _warm_ on this planet,” Ahsoka says, pulling her jacket a little tighter around her shoulders.

With a quiet chuckle, Shaak takes the seat beside her on the stone, apparently unbothered by the cold wind moaning across the grasslands. “In the south, where you are from, it stays warm year round,” she says, amused, and offers Ahsoka one of the cups she’s carrying. Ahsoka glances up at her face, then takes it carefully, curling her hands around the hot ceramic.

“Not up here?” she asks, because Shaak's tribe is from further north than she’s ever gone on Shili. It’s one thing to know that Shaak comes from the steppes to the north—the amount of white markings she has shows that clearly—but it’s another thing entirely to see them so clearly like this.

“No,” Shaak says, and takes a slow sip from her cup, then sighs gently, closing her eyes. “This is only the autumn. The winter will be colder still, but it looks to be a mild one this year.”

“If this is _mild_ , I can't imagine why anyone lives up here,” Ahsoka mutters. She pulls the cup close, trying to curl around its warmth a little more. “There's plenty of room on the southern grasslands, right?”

Shaak hums, tilting her face up towards the heavy clouds. “My people have stories of following a beautiful white akul north, very long ago,” she says. “They hunted it for years, always following one day behind, until they reached the far north and the beast finally slowed. It was cold, because it had run so far, but my ancestors had learned to weave spider-silk and it made them warm enough to finally chase it to ground. When they slew it, even its blood was white, and the splatters it left on them became our markings.” With a faint smile, she touches the wide swathe of white across the top of her face, then glances at Ahsoka. “We stayed, afterwards, because we had been led here. Why would we reject such a gift?”

“Oh,” Ahsoka says, and frowns down at her cup. “My—my tribe, when I went back to do my hunt—they had stories of a black akul that led them to their sacred river.”

“A matched set, perhaps,” Shaak says easily. “One that led your people to their river, and one that led my people to their home. Drink your tea. It will help ward off the chill.”

Ahsoka blinks, glancing down at her cup, and quickly lifts it. The first swallow is hot enough to burn, and she winces, blowing on the surface before trying again. That sip burns, too, but not from the heat, and she pulls back in surprise. “It’s spicy.”

“A mixture of spices, traditional for this time of year,” Shaak allows. “To warm the blood and bolster the immune system.” She pauses for a moment, watching the sky, and then smiles. “Look,” she says, and points upwards, to where the clouds are finally shredding before the wind.

Ahsoka looks too, putting up a hand to shield her eyes from the wind. The steppe around them is wide and open, the only hills far in the distance, and from the rise of the mound they're seated on it’s easy to see all six of Shili’s moons in perfect alignment, glowing jewellike against the dark sky. They're too bright to leave stars visible, so there's nothing but the moons against the velvety sky, and Ahsoka feels a flicker of something like adrenaline, a wash of bright heat that makes her breath a cloud of vapor in the air in front of her.

“Oh,” she says, which isn't anywhere close to enough, but—

Shaak makes a low sound of agreement, draining her cup and setting it aside. When she smiles, there's a moment of sharp teeth behind it, a glimpse of long canines that make something like excitement shiver down Ahsoka's spine. Teeth mean a hunt, and a hunt means movement and joy and a fierce sort of elation that’s hard to find anywhere else.

“Finish your tea,” Shaak says. “It’s not the season to hunt akul, but—tonight is a good night to play with them, I think.”

Akul are four meters tall and faster than any Togruta, with teeth like razors and claws that can kill with a single blow. Anakin saw a holo of one and blanched pale green, and Ahsoka may have laughed herself sick over his reaction. She hunted one, passed the rite of adulthood when she was thirteen, just before she became his apprentice. It was one of the most terrifying moments of her life, but—

She wants to do it again. Her heart is pounding, the world is going sharp and focused, and there's a pulse of something bright and hot in her chest. A hunt. She can hunt, and even if they don’t kill, they can still harry the akul, tease them, because she and Shaak are more dangerous. The akul are sacred, but the Togruta can overcome them. _Ahsoka_ can overcome them. She’s already proved it once, and she doesn’t need to prove it again, but she wants to, if only to herself.

“Maybe we’ll find a white akul,” she says, smirking, and swallows her tea down. It burns in her throat, spice and heat and moonlight, and Shaak laughs and offers Ahsoka her hands.

“Or a black one,” she counters, and when Ahsoka grips her fingers, Shaak pulls her to her feet. “And if we do not, well. Perhaps we may find a bull who would care to chase us.”

When Ahsoka hunted her akul, she led it into a trap in the canyons, let it think it had her cornered before she turned to face it. the idea of doing the same here, but letting the akul go, letting it escape after they’ve beaten it at its own game, is just as appealing, and Ahsoka zips her coat up a little higher and says, “I wish Anakin had come. He’d _love_ this.”

Shaak laughs, one hand coming up to hide it. “He would hate it,” she counters, smiling.

Ahsoka shrugs, casual. “Well, _I’d_ love watching him run screaming.”

With a chuckle, Shaak pushes her lekku back, over her shoulders, and tilts her head. “Shall we?” she asks, and Ahsoka kicks off her boots. The grass is freezing, but—no Togruta would ever hunt with anything other than bare feet. Even if this is just a play hunt, there's no way she’s wearing shoes. Shaak's feet are already bare, and she takes three long steps past Ahsoka, then breaks into a run, a blur of motion through the tall grass. With a crow, Ahsoka leaps after her, passing her on the downward slope and leaping for the top of a boulder that juts from the steppe. She tumbles off of it, landing lightly on her feet just as Shaak races past, then falls in behind her as they run.

The six moons burn in a straight line across the steppe, leading them onward, and the wind is cold, but the earth is warm under Ahsoka's feet and Shaak is laughing against the wind, and just for a moment she can't imagine being anywhere else in the galaxy.


End file.
